Reply #2: It all comes down to patriarchy, doesn't it? [View All]

[Warpy]

Women are devalued, marginalized, and blamed for sex. Some cultures criminalize everything but strictly prescribed marital sex. Any illness that is transmitted by sex becomes not only a source of deep shame, but a threat to life and limb beyond that of the disease, itself, because men and their institutions will punish that woman for reminding them that they, too, are animal and vulnerable to disease.

If the human race wants to survive HIV, it will have to stop relegating half its members to the status of natural slave, of property, of "other."

Were I a woman in those conditions, I might deny, too. Better the child not survive me, because I know I will die before it is out of childhood and its father will not care for it.